I am sorry the Taoiseach is leaving the House because when I am about to say unkind things about a person, I prefer to say them to his face. The Taoiseach holds a high office in this country, a high office which has duties and responsibilities as well as privileges and it is therefore very much to be regretted that he has chosen in that office, in recent months in particular, to adopt a practice which degrades his office very much indeed. I am quite prepared to admit that anyone can make a mistake from time to time and that a person may make a statement believing it to be true and later discover that it was not in accordance with the facts, but a person in the office of Taoiseach should take steps before making any such statement to ensure that what he is about to state bears a resemblance to the truth and it is not for him, without degrading his office, to make statements recklessly without taking adequate steps and without believing in the truth of what he puts forward.
I want to relate that to the debate on this Budget and to our economic and financial situation. First, may I refer to the speech made by the Taoiseach on the Vote on Account on 10th March last? He told us and, through the House and the newspapers, the people, that this Government of which he is the leader were facing a very difficult budgetary situation. I refuse to believe that the Minister for Finance was at that time concealing from the Taoiseach and from the Government the extraordinary buoyancy of the revenue for reasons to which I shall refer later. I refuse to believe that the Minister for Finance had not taken the Taoiseach into his confidence and that the Taoiseach was not, on 10th March, in possession of as much information as the Minister himself. But I do believe that statement was made by the Taoiseach at that time for the purpose of making the people's blood run cold, for the purpose of making them apprehensive about the additional burdens that might be placed on them in the Budget and for the purpose of creating a Party atmosphere in which there would be, so to speak, a sigh of relief when the Budget was produced. The fact and the truth, as I shall show later, is that far from there being a difficult budgetary situation, in the words of the Taoiseach himself in 1955, any Minister for Finance who knew his job could have made this far the easiest budgetary problem there was to handle at any time during the past 20 years.
The manner in which the Taoiseach spoke on that date for purely Party purposes was degrading to his office and does not do our national reputa-he confidently proclaimed to the public that if only he were given the power, over a period of five years, there would be another 100,000 jobs went even further to make it clear tion or confidence in the country any good. The Taoiseach also made a speech in 1955 about which certain Deputies on this side of the House have already spoken, a speech in which for our people. In that speech, he that not alone were there to be 100,000 new jobs at the end of five years but that there were to be 20,000 a year from the very first year they started. The unfortunate people up and down the country who themselves were looking for jobs and the wives of men looking for jobs so as to earn a living in their own country were deceived and beguiled by that most specific promise by the Taoiseach into giving him and his Party votes and support at the general election of 1957.
The other day the Taoiseach had the hardihood and the disgrace of coming to this House denying that he had ever said any such thing. I do not blame him for not putting that policy into effect. I always knew from the first moment it was promised that it was just nonsense, that he was completely misconceiving the economic position because he was trying to suggest a policy based on the multiplier theory for this country, a policy which might, perhaps, even with some inflation, have an effect on a closed economy but a policy which was nonsense so far as our circumstances here were concerned.
I do not blame him for not putting it into effect but I do blame him for not having the honour and manliness now to come out and say that the speech he made at that time was misconceived and that he is now satisfied that the position was entirely different and that the solution he then adumbrated was indeed no solution at all. I think other members of the Government are to be congratulated on the fact that they have dissuaded him from that mad-cap scheme which undoubtedly would only have plunged us into far greater difficulties, but to come out openly as he did last week and to say he never said any such thing, gambling and hoping that nobody on this side of the House would have his quotation to hand is something that does him no honour and, on the contrary, does our own country when he is the Leader of the Government great discredit.
That is not the only occasion on which he has done that in recent weeks. He did it also in speaking on the Trade Agreement when he said nobody who had any recent connection with Fiann Fáil ever suggested that the British market had gone forever. Let me put very quietly and briefly on the record that Mr. de Valera himself said that on 9th August, 1933, in this House, as reported in Volume 49, column 1610, and that he said it again in Ennis on 27th August, 1933, so that the suggestion by the Taoiseach that the only person who had ever said that was Mr. Connolly, then Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, is untrue, and if the Taoiseach did not know it was untrue when he was making the suggestion, he was speaking recklessly and without the care which he should give his utterances as a person holding his office.
Finally, may I say in relation to his contribution to this debate, the brazen attack he made on the Central Statistics Office is something that degrades beyond question. I want to read just one quotation from Volume 181, column 464. The Taoiseach states:—
If it means all the people in the country who could be induced, under any circumstances, to take work for wages, even married women or relatives assisting farmers on their farms, then it is a different picture altogether and, in my view, a completely wrong type of concept to insert into our statistical returns.
The Taoiseach has the Central Statistics Office to his hand. It is but a matter of a moment for him to get someone, if he does not already understand, which I doubt, to explain to him the manner in which these returns are compiled. For him to cast doubts of that sort and to criticise in the manner in which he did the figures that are published is something altogether degrading and, in my opinion, utterly disgraceful.
There are four events which have occurred in the passage of the last few months all related to our economic situation. There are four cases in which the Taoiseach has chosen Party advantage, first of all, and has chosen Party advantage in a way that shows clearly he was prepared "to chance his arm" in the hope that he would "get away with it." He was prepared to "chance his arm" and hope that no one on this side of the House would have the relevant information to hand to contradict him and show he was wrong. That kind of gambling is not something of which anyone could be proud in the Head of a Government.
When the Minister for Finance introduced his Budget this year he circulated, as is usual, and I thank him for the courtesy, a copy of that Budget speech. We had an opportunity of reading it while the Minister was delivering it. As I read, I was annoyed at the lecture he saw fit to give the Opposition towards the end. I have read that many times since and, each time, I get more annoyed still. The arrogance behind the view that nothing must be criticised because criticism will do damage to the "baby in my arms" is something which must be heard and read to be believed.
This is a particular type of political blackmail. The Minister deliberately tried in that statement to suggest to us and to the country that anybody who criticised was guilty of national sabotage and was guilty of damaging the economic fabric of the country. That is a type of political blackmail which must be resisted because the next step to that is towards the secret police type of State such as they have in Russia.
In so far as I am able, I shall put on the records of this House an analysis of our economic position at the moment, stressing both the bad and the good points. I will not be deterred from doing that by any political threat the Minister may have made in the final paragraphs of his Budget speech. The issue is not, as Deputy Corish rightly said, whether we are better off than the Chinese, the Lascars or the inhabitants of central Africa. The issue is not, as the Taoiseach suggested in the worst possible taste, whether we have a "mark on our foreheads" entitling us to a better standard of living. The issue is a very simple one in relation to our economic affairs. The issue is whether we are making sufficient progress both absolutely and relatively in relation to other countries. We are lucky in that we have been able to achieve in the last hundred years some of the benefits and some of the fruits of the industrial revolution—benefits and fruits which were denied, if you like, to the Chinese coolies irrespective of their ancient civilisation.
There has been throughout the western world very substantial progress as a result of the industrial revolution. There has been a substantial increase in the standard of living in Ireland as in other Western European countries. There has been a substantial increase since we set up our own institutions of State 40 years ago. The issue is not whether or not there has been an increase. The issue is whether that increase has been adequate and sufficient to ensure that we have made the material progress to which we are entitled having regard to the inventions and skill available to us in this modern machine age and having regard to whether or not we have been able to make relatively sufficient progress to keep pace, at least, with our neighbours. If we are not able to make relatively sufficient progress to keep pace with our neighbours then, above all else, the drain of emigration will continue.
That is the real issue. It is not a question, as the Minister tried to suggest, of people alleging we have not made progress down through the years. We have made some progress. The question is have we made enough progress and are we progressing now in the right direction? Are we ensuring that our progress now is sufficient to enable us to keep pace, at least, with other countries which are making quite substantial progress at the present time. If we do not keep pace we shall fall further and further behind in the economic race.
The Minister must remember that it was not because of anything said on this side of the House that the term "undeveloped country" came into current circulation as being applied to us. It was the Government that decided—rightly and correctly decided—when consideration of the Common Market and the European Free Trade Area arose that we were an undeveloped country and should, therefore, obtain certain concessions from those organisations. The issue is the relative progress and the rate of progress in relation to our economic circumstances. We are entitled on this side of the House not merely to ask is the rate of progress adequate, but we are also entitled to ask is the rate of progress such as the present Government promised it would be when they sought the suffrage of the people in 1957? Is the rate of progress under their policies such that they have vindicated the promises they gave then to the people? These are completely different issues from those the Minister tried to put across in his Budget speech.
I agree with him when he says there has been progress made under all Governments. Of course, that is true. Again, it is a question of the rate of progress. In relation to that, let me say that one of the fundamental difficulties with which the country and the Government—not just the Govern- the early part of 1956 was that we ment alone—were faced in 1955 and were trying to make too great progress too quickly. We were trying to do too much too quickly. It was because we were trying to do too much too quickly that it was necessary for me slightly to put on the brake and the situation then would have required only a very slight application of the brake were it not for the fact that international terms of trade suddenly started to turn badly against this country. Again, there, it was a question of the rate of progress and the relative progress of our country compared with other countries. Our difficulty was that we were trying to do too much too quickly. Anyone who looks back now on what occurred in those days must see, without question, the manner in which certain social investment in particular reached its peak merely because we were trying to do, all at once, too much too quickly.
The Budget the Minister introduced was the third Budget the Fianna Fáil Government has brought in so far this year. The first Budget was that by the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs when he increased postage charges, increased the charges for telegrams from 2/6d. to 3/- and increased the charges for Press telegrams. One does not see the other side of the picture in relation to extractions from the people in this Budget No. 3, but they are there just the same. The second Budget introduced by the Fianna Fáil Government was some fortnight or three weeks before the Minister's formal Budget speech on the 27th April. That was when the Government decreed and directed that some £950,000 extra would be paid by consumers through an increase of 3d. per Ib. on butter for the purpose of giving an additional subvention in relation to milk. Again, although the Minister has taken credit in his Budget speech for the improvements given to dairy farmers, he has not put on the other side of the picture the amount that has to be included as being extracted from the pockets of the consumers. I would not have made any reference to this Budget as Budget No. 2 if the Minister had not decided to derive benefit from one side of the transaction without at the same time admitting there was another debit side to it.
This Budget No. 3 was announced at a time when, in relation to agriculture in particular, charges were rising steeply. In 1956-57 the amount collected from rates per head of the population was £6 15s. 11d. In 1959-60 the amount has risen to £7 6s. 6d.— 10/7d. in three years. I can see from the Tables the Minister has circulated that in the coming year there will again be a substantial increase. The Tables suggest a certain increase as against the Book of Estimates, which makes it appear that there will be an increase of some seven per cent. Without the behind-the-scenes information I am not in any position to reconcile the Book of Estimates seven per cent. and the Economic Tables three per cent. No doubt there is some explanation of that, but whatever way one takes it, one can be sure of this: that it would appear that in 1960-61 more is being collected per head of the population in rates—more by about 15/- per head—than in the year 1956-57. That, too, is another charge that does not appear in the Budget Statement or in the Tables circulated at the time of the Budget.
I had rather hoped that when the Minister was making his Budget Statement he would have had something to tell us about the Report of the Income Tax Commission. We have had already two Reports from that Commission. As everyone is aware, the Report which dealt with P.A.Y.E. was discussed in this House some six months ago. At that time I suggested it was utterly wrong for the Commission to have brought in that recommendation without giving some indication that they had considered the main and larger problem of income tax as a whole. The Minister did not suggest then that they had done any such thing. I heard some suggestion at a later stage that they had given consideration to the wider and more general application. In fact, I heard suggestions, too, that reports had been given to the Minister in that light. I do not know whether that is true or not, but I would think we were entitled to receive from the Minister during his Budget Speech some indication of the progress made in relation to the work of that Commission, whether he had received any further report from them or had any news as to how they were proceeding with the main task to which they were to address themselves.
During the course of the last month also a second progress report has been issued by the Department of Finance on the movement along the White Paper. There is not very much new in that progress report. This is merely the publication of the progress reports which for many years past came to the Taoiseach every month showing what had been done in every Department. All that is happening now is that the Minister for Finance or the Government—I do not know which— have decided that they shall be published. It is only bringing out into the light of day the progress reports always made available to any Taoiseach, as far as I am aware, and certainly to every Taoiseach in recent years. If the intention of the publication of that report is to ensure that there will be confidence in the country, as apart from confidence in the Government, may I suggest that that confidence would be far better created by the Minister and his colleagues coming out flatly and honourably admitting that the promises they made in 1956-57 were entirely without foundation and that they now find they were mistaken when making those speeches at that time?
The Minister for Finance touched in his Budget Statement on the problem of the Civil Service. In his Budget Statement of 1957 he gave us an undertaking that he would deal with the problem of the Civil Service as one of the greatest urgency. I have not yet got the figures for the Civil Service census for the 1st January, 1960. As far as I know, they are not available. The last figures available gave us the figures in respect of the Civil Service census on the 1st January, 1959. As a result of that we find that there were on the 1st January, 1959, more civil servants than on the 1st January, 1957, notwithstanding the Minister's undertaking to this House in the Budget of 1957. The total on the 1st January, 1957, was 30,723 and the total on the 1st January, 1959, was 28,039. The method of taking the census varied, the official wording saying that 2,700 were omitted from the 1959 census. "Not less than 2,700" is the exact wording. I have given the Minister the benefit of any excess there may be. Adding that 2,700, in fact, it works out, by the same method of taking the census, that there were more civil servants on the 1st January, 1959, than on the 1st January, 1957.
One thing that is desirable is that there has been some improvement, some decrease in the number of part-time civil servants, and that the balancing factor has been in whole-time civil servants. The proper way of dealing with the matter, of course, would be to cut down the total numbers; yet, at the same time, it is satisfactory to note that there has been a decrease in part-time employment. I might add that when the 1960 census comes along, we shall have to consider it, not merely absolutely in relation to the number of civil servants who were there at 1st January, 1959, added to those who have been taken off the census roll, but also in relation to the number of those who went out during 1959 to Gaeltarra Éireann and ceased to be counted as civil servants. There were not very many of them—some 27—by which the appropriate figures require to be adjusted.
As I said a few minutes ago, the Minister for Finance, when he came to approach this Budget, came to approach the simplest Budget ever, if he had done his job. Last year, I expressed grave doubts as to whether he would get £2,500,000 over-estimation, as it was described as that at first. Subsequently it transpired that he was not taking £2,500,000 in overestimation but was taking £2,500,000 errors of estimation, which included not merely under-expenditure but also under-estimation of revenue—buoyancy of revenue. Even then it was doubtful to me whether he would get that £2,500,000, allowing for under-expenditure on the one hand and buoyancy of revenue on the other. However, he did get it, and I am glad he got it because it will undoubtedly help the country, but the manner in which he got it is something to which he made no advertence whatever in his Budget Statement.
Anybody who studies the returns of revenue week by week over the last financial year must have it driven home to him, clearly and categorically beyond question, that the buoyancy in revenue arose because of the injection into the economy of the seventh round of wages. I think the Minister would agree at once that when he was framing his Budget last year, he did not frame it in any belief that that round of wage increases would be paid. I think he would also agree at once that when we were speaking on the Budget last year, we were not basing our estimates on there being an injection of the size and nature that was injected as a result of the seventh round of wage increases.
It would be a useless exercise to try to guess—it would not be anything more than that—whether if there were not the seventh round of wages, revenue would have been as buoyant as it was. My own view is quite clearly and categorically that it would not, and one would have a very different picture at the end of last year, and for the forecast for this year, if we had not got that type of increased money in circulation, a great deal of which found its way into the Exchequer.
The Minister, of course, in balancing, as he terms it, his Budget last year, and in balancing it this year, is taking moneys that belonged to capital account and transferring them to current account, and is taking expenditure that belongs to current account and transferring it to capital account. That is a bad thing to do and, of course, it does very definitely mar the claim of balancing which the Minister makes. I want to put another point of view in relation to that. I want to put it to the Minister that to suggest that the Budget is balanced in its present form, or was balanced last year in that form, is nonsense. We have not had a balanced Budget in this country for years and years, that is, in the way in which "balanced" used to be known.
I do not think it makes much difference these days whether expenditure is above or below the line. Whether things are put in by way of voted capital services or by way of below the line issues does not make very much difference. What does make the difference is the type of productive development on which the money is spent, and I think that we would be approaching our problems in a more realistic way if we did not try to pretend that we were balancing out, and if we made up our minds that what we wanted to do in any particular year was to arrive at the proportion of moneys we wished to take from current consumption for the purposes of capital investment in the future.
I do not mean this for the Minister's Government alone; I am thinking back and thinking forward at the same time. We should do that with our eyes open, looking at the economic situation of the day, rather than trying to make a make-believe case that because certain things had been put under the line, they were genuinely capital, or because certain things were put in the current Book of Estimates, they were really current. We have got ourselves into far too rigid a position because what we ought to do is utilise the Budget very much more as an economic weapon, and to do that we must get away from the rigidity that there has been.
I mentioned a second ago that the Minister had transferred certain revenue formerly treated as capital to current purposes, and the main one he has done that with is the levies. I made it clear beyond question, and it was so inserted by me in a section of the Central Fund Act of 1956, that the proceeds of the levies were to be utilised for the purpose of providing capital for additional capital works and additional capital developments that could not otherwise be sustained. The Minister concealed that and took the proceeds of the levies for current budgetary purposes. He did that much openly but he did something else secretly that is not fully realised and appreciated. While he transferred the levies openly from capital account to current account, he also made a great ballyhoo of remitting certain levies, as he had done this year, but down through the years he has neglected to tell us, and show to us, that the levies remitted were in part—in a very great part—substituted again by customs duties.
For example, in 1957/58, the amount collected from the levies was £2,490,000. In the same year, the amount collected from customs duties, imposed in lieu of levies removed, was £692,000, and the total of the levies and customs duties in lieu of levies collected that year was £3,182,000. In 1958-59, the amount of levy collected was £1,788,000. The amount of customs duty collected by duties placed on goods instead of the levies was £1,535,000—a total of levy and quasi-levy of £3,323,000. In 1959-60, the amount of levy collected was £1,586,000. The amount of customs duty collected in respect of those duties that were put on by the Government in substitution for levies was £1,855,000, making a total of £3,441,000.
Does anyone realise that this Government, who came into power by persuading shopkeepers in many parts of Ireland, directly and by implication, that they would abolish the levies, did in 1959-60, three years after they achieved office by that promise, collect £3,441,000? I have not got to my hand at the moment the amount collected by me by levy in the first year of 1956-57, but, offhand, I would say it was £4,250,000. Did any member of Fianna Fáil believe when they were going to the people in 1957 that three years after they attained office, they would be collecting out of the pockets of the people £3,441,000 by the very levies which many of them described as being totally unnecessary and unduly harsh on the community, which many of them said should never have been imposed and which they promised they would abolish and wipe out immediately they got into the seat of office?
For the current year, 1960-61, the original estimate by the Revenue Commissioners of levies at the existing rate was £1,675,000. There has been £555,000 remitted in the Budget, leaving a net figure to be collected of £1,120,000. If I add to that the customs duty equivalent to last year's, namely, £1,855,000, I get the figure £2,975,000, which the Minister in 1960-61 will collect out of the pockets of the people in levy and quasi-levy. But that is not all, because in the documents he circulated last week showing the remission of certain levies, he made it clear that other customs duties were being imposed instead of them. It is fair to say that there will be collected this year, by Fianna Fáil, £3,250,000 by levies and by the duties they substituted, dishonestly, for levies, in that manner. Some of those who went to the people in 1957 promising that the levies were unnecessary and would be removed had better examine their consciences to decide whether or not they were justified in the promises they then made.
